Owen Farrell starts for Saracens as host of England stars return
England captain Owen Farrell is set to start for Saracens as one of seven England internationals who have returned from the World Cup to feature for the Gallagher Premiership champions against Leicester Tigers at the StoneX Stadium on Saturday.
Farrell will captain the London outfit against the Tigers, and will be joined in the starting XV by Billy Vunipola, Elliot Daly, Jamie George, Maro Itoje and Ben Earl, with the latter three seeing a lot of action for England in their World Cup campaign which only ended last week with a bronze medal. On top of those six starters, Theo Dan is also on the bench a week after his try-scoring display against Argentina at the Stade de France.
“It has been fantastic to be back at Sarries this week and be back with everyone,” Farrell said, as reported by the PA.
“It is always nice to come back after a while away, and we are now really excited to get stuck in to the season all together.”
Leicester, on the other hand, have decided to rest all of their England internationals for the trip down south.
Saracens XV: 15 Alex Goode, 14 Sean Maitland, 13 Alex Lozowski, 12 Nick Tompkins, 11 Elliot Daly, 10 Owen Farrell (c), 9 Aled Davies, 1 Mako Vunipola, 2 Jamie George, 3 Marco Riccioni, 4 Maro Itoje, 5 Nick Isiekwe, 6 Andy Christie, 7 Ben Earl, 8 Billy Vunipola
Replacements: 16 Theo Dan, 17 Eroni Mawi, 18 Alec Clarey, 19 Callum Hunter-Hill, 20 Hugh Tizard, 21 Tom Willis, 22 Ivan van Zyl, 23 Tom Parton
Leicester Tigers XV: 15 Mike Brown [12], 14 Josh Bassett [5], 13 Guy Porter [66], 12 Dan Kelly [62], 11 Ollie Hassell-Collins [6], 10 Jamie Shillcock [7], 9 Tom Whiteley [10], 1 James Cronin [17], 2 Charlie Clare [83], 3 Joe Heyes [128], 4 Cameron Henderson [42], 5 Sam Carter [5], 6 Hanro Liebenberg (c) [90], 7 Tommy Reffell [101], 8 Olly Cracknell [28]
Replacements: 16 Nic Dolly [30], 17 Francois van Wyk [37], 18 Will Hurd [30], 19 Harry Wells [180], 20 Matt Rogerson [5], 21 Joe Powell [6], 22 Charlie Atkinson [22], 23 Solomone Kata*
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The weather was dreadful but the playing surface was great so there is no real excuse for such another poor standard of play from both sides. Dragons just the better team. But, what a shocking decision by the TMO not to award the Fifita try. This pretty much sums up Welsh rugby with poor teams and poor officials. The WRU have a lot of work to do and it needs to be done quickly to avoid rugby being lost to our future generations.
Go to commentsNo chance of Borthwick selecting any young talent. He announced his selection policy from the outset with naming a poor OF as Captain, retaining an equally poor Youngs and Vunipola brothers when there were many better EQP in the Premiership. SB revival of Leicester was based on SA muscle and a terrific Welsh flanker he has generally ignored young English talent.
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